Richard Lord

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard will de­cide if crim­i­nal charges are to be laid against any­one for il­le­gal tap­ping of cit­i­zens' phones by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA), Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day. At the time she was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the mat­ter fol­low­ing an ad­dress to an ICT sym­po­sium at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. "Those will be de­ci­sions for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. I can­not pre­judge and com­pro­mise a de­ci­sion to be made by an in­de­pen­dent le­gal of­fi­cer of the State–the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions," she said. The PM was asked if she knew of the work of the SIA, which was in ex­is­tence dur­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Bas­deo Pan­day Gov­ern­ment be­tween 1995 and 2001.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar act­ed as Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing that pe­ri­od and was al­so At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, which meant she would have served on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. She re­spond­ed: "I can­not re­call when the SIA was set up but it is my firm view, and I am very com­mit­ted to that, that no cit­i­zens phones should be tapped out­side of the law. It must be with­in a reg­u­lat­ed frame­work." She con­tin­ued: "At no time did any­one in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil or oth­er­wise with the (se­cu­ri­ty) in­tel­li­gence... no one, no one at any meet­ing ever said a sin­gle word about phones be­ing tapped. There was a def­i­nite si­lence on that is­sue." She said on­ly last month she got a text (mes­sage) about "a meet­ing tak­ing place be­tween cer­tain peo­ple, where a re­quest was be­ing made for tran­scripts and tapes from that par­tic­u­lar unit."

The Prime Min­is­ter re­called the se­quence of events that fol­lowed: "When I got that in­for­ma­tion I ac­tioned the Spe­cial Branch, I spoke with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and it was re­port­ed back to me by the branch that such a meet­ing was in fact tak­ing place at the time and venue that the source had in­di­cat­ed." The PM said: "It was on­ly when we were ad­vised on the evening of Oc­to­ber 22 that there ap­peared to have been some at­tempts to sani­tise what was hap­pen­ing in there (SIA) that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice un­der­took the op­er­a­tion that he did on the Sat­ur­day (Oc­to­ber 23) and shut down the place." She said the of­fices of the SIA had re­mained shut since then. Asked about the fu­ture of the SIA of­fi­cers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "The po­lice will have to in­ves­ti­gate (and) where there is wrong­do­ing the law will take its course." She said Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams is head­ing a team which is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

"They are putting things in place to have a foren­sic au­dit be­cause of the mas­sive amount of cash that was found at the lo­ca­tion and in­deed how it was be­ing spent be­cause there is no pa­per­work to sup­port it," the PM told re­porters. She con­firmed that the op­er­a­tions of the SIA was shut down on her in­struc­tions last month. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she could not say how many names were on the list. "It's a data­base and I don't know the to­tal off­hand. We await the re­port of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors," the PM added. She said the plan was to re­struc­ture "all of these in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and set­ting up one na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agency." A re­port on that mat­ter was ex­pect­ed next month, the PM added, and the Williams Com­mit­tee has been dis­cussing the mat­ter with US of­fi­cials. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the au­thor­i­ties were con­sid­er­ing in­form­ing oth­er peo­ple not iden­ti­fied in her state­ment to Par­lia­ment last Fri­day that their names were on the list. She said it would be up to those per­sons to an­nounce it pub­licly if they so wished.

"It's a fur­ther in­va­sion of their pri­va­cy to be putting their names all over the news­pa­pers as be­ing per­sons whose (phones) were tapped," she said. The PM said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing com­ments on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cit­i­zens tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State and a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment or a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry is be­ing con­sid­ered to deal with the mat­ter.